Marine vessels are often located in locations that are not easy-to-reach. Marine vessels are often mobile and may travel to or operate in remote areas of the world. Failures in critical systems such as an engine breakdown or a fault in a positioning system can present serious risks, including risk of fatalities to personnel and damage to the environment. Reliability of systems on a marine vessel are of critical importance. At the same time, offshore and marine industries face a demand from owners and customers to maintain operations at a low cost.
On-board equipment and systems on marine vessels are becoming increasingly complex. Diverse and sophisticated systems are commonly found onboard ships and may include systems such as electrical power management systems, process automation equipment, ventilation equipment, positioning systems, dynamic positioning and position mooring, propulsion control systems, and the like. Maintenance personnel on board normally do not have the competence to diagnose or fix problems related to every system in which a problem may occur. An on-board person may even have difficulties identifying which components need to be replaced and then obtaining spare parts efficiently. In such situations case delays and high costs are involved, especially when technical experts have to travel long distances to reach a marine vessel.
Marine vessels and ships may be equipped with control systems to control various equipment and systems on board which are not unlike industrial control and process control systems used in general manufacturing and other industries. Such control systems advantageously comprise or are in some way linked to maintenance systems to organise, schedule, carry out diagnoses etc. for maintenance of equipment or systems.
A software architecture that is used in an industrial control system manufactured by ABB is described in part by WO00102953 entitled “Method of integrating an application in a computerized system”. WO00102953 discloses a method for integration of many and various types of applications in a computerized system. This method is based on a concept where real world objects are represented as “composite objects”. Different facets of a real world object, such as its physical location, the current stage in a process, a control function, an operator interaction, a simulation model, some documentation about the object, etc., are each described as different aspects of the composite object. A composite object is a container for one or more such aspects. Thus, a composite object is not an object in the traditional meaning of object-oriented systems, but rather a container of references to such traditional objects, which implement the different aspects. Each aspect or group of aspects may be implemented by an independent software application, which provides its functionality through a set of interfaces that are accessible through the composite object. Another software application can thus query a composite object for a function associated with one of its aspects, and as a result obtain through the composite object a reference to the interface that implements the function. Industrial control systems generally comprise, include or are in some way linked to maintenance systems to organise, schedule, diagnosis etc. maintenance of equipment or systems controlled by the control system.
Ordinary computer systems and networked computers are often provided with technical support for application problems, network problems and so on by means of remotely located technical support specialists. Typically a remotely located Help Desk specialist may be contacted by phone, e-mail, intranet or the Internet etc. to assist with a problem of a computerised system. Certain software applications familiar to those skilled in the art of Local Area Networks (LANs) are readily available so that a technical specialist at a remotely located Help Desk may look at a display running on the problematic computer system and input selections or commands as though the specialist were present in person. However, such specialists are only able to assist with computer program or operating system/network operating system i.e. “computer system” problems related to the operations of a specific LAN.
Maintenance personnel on board a marine vessel may use a control system to monitor, control, regulate equipment and or systems installed on, or associated with, the marine vessel. Such a system may contain extensive technical information about the equipment and systems onboard. However, it is difficult to collect information relevant to each configuration of possible onboard equipment, and for all technical eventualities. It is also difficult to keep such complex technical information up to date.